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PANORAMA
Bin Laden's
BIOLOGICAL THREAT
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 28:10:01
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TOM MANGOLD: The fear is as old as history. The plague doctor of the middle ages helpless in the
continent where disease killed millions. Today the images have returned and with them the fear that disease
may walk the land once more.
14 September 2001
TONY BLAIR: [Speaking in the House] We know that they would, if they could, go further and use
chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons of mass destruction. We know also that there are groups or
people occasionally states who will trade the technology and capability of such weapons.
MANGOLD: Could there really be a biological attack by Al Qaeda terrorists and are we ready for it if there
is. Tonight Panorama sorts facts from fears and investigates the reality behind six weeks that have shaken
the world.
24 October 2001
GEORGE BUSH: First of all I don't have anthrax.
MANGOLD: The man in the White House may have escaped but three people have been murdered by
proxy, another ten infected and thirty-two more exposed. Letters laced with anthrax have closed Congress
and sent the US mail service into chaos. The perpetrators remain free. No link has been established to Bin
Laden but there is growing evidence in the West of his involvement in the new horror of biological
terrorism.
MARGARET HAMBURG
Former Commissioner of Health, New York City
People really panic at the notion of an unseen, potentially lethal agent when you don't know for sure
whether you've been exposed or not.
DONALD HENDERSON
Chairman, U.S. Public Health Preparedness
Most countries have given little thought to the risk that's involved here and not appreciated what the
problem is, and therefore they've done very little to prepare for it.
TOM MANGOLD
A crop dusting plane in central Florida. This unlikely location contains the first real clue that Al Qaeda
terrorists were planning something very unusual, even before their September 11th atrocities. This remote
airfield in Florida may have been as close as it gets to becoming the focus for the first biological attack by
Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists on a mainland city, possibly Miami. The evidence, while circumstantial,
points inexorably to the conclusion that this, at the very least, may have been in the minds of the men who
subsequently died on September 11th. Last March a group of Middle Eastern men arrived uninvited and
unannounced at the airfield. They carried still and video cameras and took pictures of the planes. No one
objected to the questions they asked.
JIM LESTOR
Three guys came up here about 10 - 10.30 in the morning. A guy came up, he just came up.. he came up
and he wanted to know could he get an airplane. I said no, you can't get an airplane. I says the owner's not
here. So he turns to me, he says well how do you start it?
MANGOLD: We now know the man asking the questions was Mohamed Atta, believed to be the
ringleader of the suicide hijackers who flew into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September
11th. So what was it about crop dusters that so intrigued Mohamed Atta? Eight years ago America's
Congressional Office of Technology took the threat of biological terrorism seriously enough to use
Washington to show what one crop dusting plane filled with weapons grade anthrax could do.
DONALD HENDERSON
Chairman, U.S. Public Health Preparedness
One sets the material loose at dusk, after the sun goes down. With something in the order of 100 kilos of
anthrax spores, a good proportion of the population could suffer and die from anthrax depending very much
on how its spread and the efficiency of it.
MANGOLD: But who in their right mind would ever dream of murdering the civilian population of an
entire capital city? One man has admitted he has no moral objections.
"We do not consider it a crime if we have tried to have nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Our Holy
Land is occupied by Israeli and American forces. We have the right to defend ourselves liberate our Holy
Land"
MANGOLD: Nor is this just idle rhetoric.
12 October 2001
Vice President DICK CHENEY
We know that he has, over the years, tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction, both biological and
chemical weapons. We know that he's trained people at his camps in Afghanistan for example with copies
of the manuals that they've actually used to train people with respect to how to deploy and use these kinds
of substances. So you start to piece it all together.. again we have not completed the investigation, and
maybe it's coincidence, but I must say I'm a sceptic.
MANGOLD: In fact some of the evidence has been around but never fully coordinated. Now western
intelligence are joining the dots and looking for patterns. In 1999 spy satellites revealed that Bin Laden's
terrorists had primitive biochemical research facilities near the towns of Khoust and Abu Khabab north of
Jalalabad. Ahmad Rosan, an Al Qaeda terrorist caught in the United States revealed that Bin Laden was
personally interested in using low flying aircraft to dispense biochemical agents. Important evidence then
came from Egypt. In June 1999 over 100 hard men from various radical Islamic terrorist cells closely allied
with Bin Laden were on trial. One of them, headed the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Military Operations,
admitted his group possessed biological weapons for use against numerous American and Israeli targets.
He had tried to buy biological weapons in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.
[Prisoner, calling from behind bars] Osama bin Laden is the Mujahid. For the sake of God, he declared to
the whole world that whoever wants to challenge America can do so on condition that he is not an agent of
America.
MANGOLD: Another of the men now serving a life sentence as a result of the trial has since confessed that
agents for Bin Laden bought samples of germs including botulinum toxin for less than £5000 in the Czech
Republic and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Some analysts see this as more than a coincidence.
PORTER GOSS
Chairman, U.S. House Intelligence Committee
I would suggest that any good intelligence community would immediately connect those dots and test it and
say is this something that is possible and go back and test it and try and see what could actually be there.
MANGOLD: So where could Al Qaeda find the actual biological agents and the expertise to refine them
into weapons? The old Soviet Union had an extensive biological warfare programme until ten years ago.
Last year I visited a once secret germ warfare laboratory near Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Conditions inside
were appalling and the lack of new work has left extensive unemployment amongst the once skilled
scientists. This is the kind of fertile ground where hard currency will buy almost anything. Dr Ken Alibek
once ran the civilian side of the Soviet Union's legal and illegal biological warfare programme. He's
warned the West about former members of the programme who are on the market.
Dr KEN ALIBEK
Former Head Scientist
Soviet Biological Warfare Programme
If you've got a 20-50 dollar salary.. a month's salary, what you would do if you need to feed your children
and your family, and you know if somebody is coming and offering you several thousand dollars? It's a
great temptation.
MANGOLD: The CIA calculates there are some 11,000 former Soviet biological warfare scientists still
looking for work. MI6 and the CIA try to maintain a watch list of the key talent, but how can Western
intelligence officers dissuade the mercenaries from working with Al Qaeda terrorists?
PORTER GOSS
Chairman, U.S. House Intelligence Committee
It may very well be appropriate to have a special envoy to talk to somebody in that situation and see what it
would to keep him on the proper side of the law.
MANGOLD: In other words you would be in favour of somebody delivering the gypsy's warning.
GOSS: I think that would be a very apt way to put it.
MANGOLD: This is the notorious Hell's Island in the Aral Sea. It was used by the Soviets for their
biological warfare tests and experiments. The Russians left a deadly detritus of bacteria and viruses on this
remote toxic archipelago. Anthrax spores have been detected literally on the scabby surface of the land
which is now accessible to any terrorist by foot. There's no firm evidence that Al Qaeda has purchased
either scientist or germs from the former Soviet Union but they can still go shopping. There are always 250
scientific centres in the United States alone which carry stocks of anthrax and over 1000 sites abroad. It's a
prospect that haunts Western and Eastern leaders today.
13 September 2001-10-28
GEORGE ROBERTSON
Secretary General, NATO
There is the credible possibility that terrorists, or what President Putan called 'rogue states', would use
ballistic missile technology to take weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons into the
heart of cities.
MANGOLD: Rogue States, code for Iraq, one country that has an advanced biological warfare programme.
September 11th has renewed the struggle in the West between those who see Iraq's hand behind all Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism, and now want a second front against Iraq to finish Saddam off, and those who say
there may be circumstantial evidence but no proof, and until then he should be left along. Former CIA boss
Jim Woolsey takes the hard view.
JIM WOOLSEY
Director, CIA, 1994-95
Saddam succeeded in keeping all biological agents and all actual material away from the inspectors,
probably so they couldn't analyse it and type it, and he said that he destroyed all of his biological weapons
and material for it, and if you believe that, as we say over here, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell
you.
MANGOLD: It is undeniable that Saddam Hussein's biological warfare programme was extensive and
highly developed by the end of the Gulf War. UN inspectors dredged up what they could and destroyed it
but much remained carefully hidden from their prying eyes. To make matters worse, the UN has had no
inspectors inside Iraq since 1998, so allowing the biological programme to restart. So today the 64 dollar
question is, has Iraq, a secular Arab state, been helping Osama bin Laden and his network in their terrorist
attacks against the one common enemy in the West. Even if it is unlikely that Saddam would take the risk,
other fundamentalist elements within his country who would sympathise sufficiently with Al Qaeda to help
when possible. This is Salman Pak, a secure peninsular near Baghdad, home of the biological weapons
programme. A clue has come from a senior Lieutenant General in Iraq's Intelligence Services who's just
defected to the West. He worked at Salman Pak and was debriefed last week by a American Intelligence.
Panorama has the defector's name but he needs to remain in hiding. He spent several years attached to
Saddam's innermost intelligence unit Fedayeen Saddam. He's also spoken at length to Nabeel Musawi, the
London representative of the Iraqi Opposition National Congress who seeks Saddam's overthrow.
NABEEL MUSAWI
Iraqi National Congress
He witnessed on many occasions Arab Afghans going in and out of the camp in Salman Pak, but
specifically he saw the training of Arab Afghans by an Iraqi intelligence officer, another Lieutenant General
who was training them on hijack and the protection of planes on a Boeing 707 used in the same camp.
MANGOLD: The Intelligence Officer was stationed in a part of Salman Pak close to Saddam's continuing
biological warfare activities. This gave him access to an incident which showed how Iraq was trying to
deceive the UN weapons inspectors.
MUSAWI: But he was certainly involved in the hiding of the biological and chemical weapons after the
Gulf War, and there was a specific incident in 1995 that involved the UN where they, for a whole night,
they were shipping biological and chemical material out of the camp through the Tigress River to another
location because they received a tip off that the UN will turn up the next morning - which it did.
MANGOLD: So they were hiding bacterial agents from United Nations' inspectors.
MUSAWI: That's correct.
MANGOLD: And he said that was a success?
MUSAWI: That was an absolute success.
MANGOLD: Like Jim Woolsey, the Iraqi national congress seeks the opportunity to produce evidence
against Baghdad, but does this colour the truth? The Iraqi National Congress has a very clear political
agenda which is to get West involved in an attack on Iraq.
MUSAWI: That's right, but I mean we're presenting evidence and we let people draw their own
conclusions from the evidence that we're presenting. We are not presenting the conclusion. We're just
presenting the defectors and the information.
MANGOLD: The CIA estimates that Iraq currently holds 10,000 litres of weaponised botulinum toxin, and
6,500 litres of weapons grade anthrax. An even more senior defector from Iraq, now living in the United
States, was Dr Khidir Hamza who was Saddam's chief nuclear weapons designer until 6 years ago.
You knew Saddam Hussein well.
HAMZA: Yes.
MANGOLD: What was his attitude towards the use of weapons of mass destruction?
KHIDIR HAMZA
Former Head, Iraq Nuclear Weapons Programme
He had really no... nothing to stop him. He has no compunction about using them. He did not use it against
the US troops and the allied troops during the Gulf War because of the fear of retaliation. That is the only
thing that stopped him. So from the connection... from the angle now, looking at it now, if he could use it
with complete deniability - he would.
MANGOLD: Half a world away, in central Europe, there's now another curious link between Iraq and the
September 11th terrorists. This one begins in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, a nation whose links
with Iraq go back many years to when both were Communist nations. The Iraqi Embassy has historically
given cover to Iraq's most important spy chief in the West who covers Prague, Budapest and Warsaw for
Saddam. In June last year Mohamed Atta travelled from Germany to the United States, but he did so going
via Prague to stop off for a very important meeting. He spent time with Saddam Hussein's spy master in
Prague, one Ahmed Khalil Samir Al-Ani. Al-Ani was to be expelled later for espionage activities when it
was discovered he'd been taking photographs of the heavily guarded Radio Free Europe building in the
centre of the city. Early on the morning of June 2nd last year Alani and Mohamed Atta each took huge risks
in meeting in the capital of the Czech Republic. Although Atta was on no security watch list Alani must
have known the men with cameras were not far away. Whatever brought them together must have been
powerfully important. The reason we know the terrorist and the Iraqi spy met here at Prague Airport on at
least one occasion is because they were photographed together by the Czech Security Services on the day
that Atta flew to the United States. But what was Mohamed Atta plotting, and why did he have to come so
far out of his way just to meet the man who was Saddam Hussein's station chief in Prague?
JIM WOOLSEY
Director, CIA, 1993-95
It looks extremely suspicious and I doubt very seriously if Mr Atta was in that lovely city of Prague as a
tourist and just happened to chance upon an Iraqi intelligence officer as his tour guide on two occasions,
and I also.. I rather doubt that his interest in crop dusting was at that point because he was interested in a
second career. He knew he had no second career. Those are both extremely suspicious acts on his part.
MANGOLD: One explanation could like with this small Czech flight trainer. In 1990 Saddam ordered a
crash programme for his biological warfare teams to adapt the tiny jet into a crop dusting system which
could spray bacterial agents of villages and towns. And now the dots form a circle to take Mohamed Atta
back to where we first found him, in Florida. We know he came here to this crop dusting field after his
meetings in Prague. We know that Iraqi intelligence runs Iraq's biological warfare programme, that
Baghdad had converted crop dusters into lethal drones of death. So what did Atta and his men actually
want?
Specifically, what did they want to know?
WILLIE LEE
They wanted to know how much fuel it holds and how much of a load it holds and what was the range on it
and so forth.
MANGOLD: Did you tell them that?
LEE: No I didn't tell 'em nothing.
MANGOLD: There's no doubt that qualified technicians could have converted the tanks and spray nozzles
of these crop dusters into an horrific biological weapon, the technology had already been mastered in
Baghdad. Mohamed Atta paid a second visit to the airfield.
JIM LESTOR
He was real persistent about getting in the airplane. You know how you run into a guy sometimes who's
real... they keep insisting or keep pushing you.
MANGOLD: Atta even went as far as trying, without success, to secure a loan from a local bank to buy a
crop duster. But why do that when he could have rented one? The FBI are now asking whether it could
have been because he needed to work on it in secret in his own time in his own place. One final dot
completes the pattern. It took Atta to Delray Beach in Florida and a pharmacy in the centre of town. This is
where Atta lived for a while. He went into this pharmacy together with colleague who was spotted by the
pharmacist Greg Chatterton who has since formally identified him.
GREG CHADDERTON
Pharmacist, Delray Beach, Florida
There are two fellows, well dressed, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help them. And the one
fellow, Otto, turned over to me and he showed me his hands, and he said "They're itching and they're
burning, do you have a cream for this?" His hands were red from this area down (indicating from wrist
down) on both of his hands, they were red. Not the normal colour you and I would have from just being
like this, but they were red. They weren't blistering - they were simply red. They were red as if you had
taken your hands and dunked them in a bucket of perhaps bleach or something. But they weren't red on this
side (backs of hands) where you would think.. that's what puzzled me, it was very perplexing that this side
(palms?) was all red, it was almost as if he had touched something like this.
MANGOLD: Ultimately Mohamed Atta chose a different, if equally appalling, fate for New York.
Significantly within hours of the attack experts checked the wreckage of the World Trade Centre for any
evidence of a biological dimension - there was none. Ironically, New York is the one city in the West
which has taken seriously the remote possibility of a biological attack by terrorists. The city has unilaterally
invested large sums of time, energy and money into developing some kind of defence against the
indefensible. New York's team was led by this man
GERRY HAUER
Commissioner, Office of Emergency Management
New York, 1992-2000
We've been working on this for 6 or 7 years it's been a concern. You prepare for it in an organised fashion.
You get yourself ready for it in an organised fashion, and whether it happens next week or in 5 years, you
have the same level of preparedness.
MANGOLD: The most vulnerable location in any city is the underground with its swirling currents ideal
for disseminating airborne anthrax spores or bacteria. Hauer needed to know what would happen down
here. The military obligingly helped out.
Army scientists took light bulbs filled with biological simulant and threw them in front of an oncoming
train. Then they measured the agent as it spread through the dark tunnel.
HAUER: The subways are an ideal mechanism because of the piston effect of the trains. It both pushes
bacterial and it pulls it along as the train goes through the station. It's an ideal mechanism to move
bacterium like anthrax throughout the city.
MANGOLD: Result? Some major American cities are placing biological sensors at strategic positions
inside the undergrounds system to help warn of an attack. But the real and virtually insoluble nightmare of
a biological attack is no one will know until it's too late.
HAUER: We assume that a biological incident will be a clandestine release. Somebody will release an
agent in a building, in a subway, in a sports venue and we won't know about it until people start becoming
sick, and it'll be two to three days before that occurs.
DONALD HENDERSON
Chairman, U.S. Public Health Preparedness
The first indication that we've had a biologic attack is very likely going to be the appearance of very sick
people in emergency rooms in hospitals.
MARGARET HAMBURG
Former Commissioner of Health, New York City
This is in fact a silent release. We will not be able to mobilise the drugs and vaccines to protect people in a
preventive way. There will be so-called canaries in the mine I think because we will recognise that the
attack has occurred because we will see illness and death. The key to preserving lives and reducing the
overall human and economic cost of such an attack will be rapid recognition of what's going on.
MANGOLD: And that meant having so-called 'push packs'. Huge containers with emergency medical
supplies inside, ready to be flown or driven to a biological emergency. The Americans have carefully
prepositioned these packs around the continent. Several were rushed to New York within 24 hours of
September 11th. They were not required. But the problem remains, by the time the first symptoms of a bio-
terrorist attack reveal themselves, it could be too late.
GERRY HAUER
Commissioner, Office of Emergency Management
New York, 1996-2000
What we did in New York City is put in place a health indicator system that allowed us to monitor the
health of the population. Every morning at 5.30 I would get a report that basically gave me the number of
deaths overnight, the number of suspicious deaths, the amount of anti-diarrhoeal medication that was sold,
admissions to hospitals through the emergency room, and if you go above a certain threshold it sets off an
alarm. And if allows you to detect changes in patterns and overlay those changes on a mapping system so
you can look at it from a geographical perspective. It's a very simple system, it's easy to do, but it gives you
an early warning that something might be out of the ordinary.
MANGOLD: But there is one more fundamental problem not only with the use of but with the mere
thought or rumour of the use of biological terrorism. Because it is silent and invisible and you may not
know you're infected until it's too late, it takes very little reality to create an inordinate amount of panic.
MARGARET HAMBURG
Former Commissioner of Health, New York City
We tend to talk about the worst case scenarios where hundreds of thousands or even millions of people
might be exposed to an infectious agent. But we also have to recognise that most likely it will be a much
less sophisticated attack but still very significant, both in terms of the disease and potential death it may
cause, but equally importantly the panic that it will cause.
MANGOLD: These are real pictures of a city on the edge. As if New Yorkers hadn't suffered enough a
few weeks earlier, they suddenly needed to come to terms with the very real terror that even the very air
they were breathing, the letters they were opening the food they were eating might already be contaminated.
It wasn't true of course, but just a little was and that was enough. We've been filming here in New York for
a couple of days now and we've run into a chilling foretaste of how a small but real biological scare can
produce a disproportionate amount of fear. Letters containing suspicious powders were sent to a television
network and the New York Times. To date just one employ has tested positive for anthrax, and here's this
morning's press. So here's the Daily News - "Anthrax Here". Fairly unequivocal as is the New York Post -
"Red Alert. FBI: New terror attacks in days." The New York Times is a little more restrained. "Anthrax
found in NBC News Aide." So this is a city living on its nerves. The demand for antibiotics has increased
ten fold and now the Mayor and his men are really trying to calm things down.
12 October, 2001
RUDOLPH GIULIANI
New York City Mayor
People should not overreact to this. They should realise that given all of the events that have occurred,
particularly September 11 and the things after that. When we have situations like this, everybody wants to
go the extra length, particularly over the health agencies to make sure that are no problems and much of this
is being done to allay people's fears.
MANGOLD: But it got worse. A bio-terrorist attack was next launched in Washington and it was lethal.
A letter sent to Senator Daschle contained highly developed weapons grade anthrax powder. He survived
but two postal workers died. The capital's postal service is in disarray and small anthrax hotspots have been
found in 11 key locations. Now it appears that the anthrax had been ground down to the size needed to
cause death by inhalation and that secret processes have been added to make the spores light and unsticky.
But the US remains deeply divided about the source which could be domestic terrorism.
Are we, in just having this conversation, being alarmist? Are we frightening the public? Do they really
need to know all this?
MARGARET HAMBURG
Former Commissioner of Health, New York City
Well I think it is a frightening topic, the prospect of the intentional use of a biological agent to cause panic,
disruption, disease and death is scary, there's no doubt about it. But I think we need to talk about it because
we need to prepare.
MANGOLD: Surat, India, 1994 and a natural outbreak of plague. Panic broke out in the streets within a
few hours as inhabitants try desperately to get out of town to avoid the invisible invaders. Only 50 people
died. Now imagine these scenes in New York, or London.
DONALD HENDERSON
Chairman, U.S. Public Health Preparedness
Only half the population of the city left the city, including a great many of the physicians, nurses and other
medical personnel. It was a disastrous occasion. But we don't really know how, let's say an American
population or a British population would respond. We have not had in an industrialised country a major
epidemic that we can identify since probably about 1918, an epidemic that was so severe that it really
stressed the entire civic structure.
MANGOLD: But the real bio-terrorist nightmare is the ancient scourge of smallpox, one of the most
devastating virus diseases. A few years ago smallpox was eradicated and research stocks left in only two
locations, one in Atlanta and one in Siberia. The world is no longer vaccinated against this illness and
every human being is vulnerable.
If it were to be smallpox, that's the nightmare scenario isn't it?
HENDERSON: Well of all the biological agents, I think we look upon smallpox as being the one of
greatest concern.
MANGOLD: Questions remain about this deadly virus. Just how secure are the official stocks kept here at
the Koltosovo Laboratories in Siberia where they were moved in defiance of a World Health Organisation
agreement from Moscow, and why was Saddam Hussein's biological warfare team at Salman Pak
experiencing with camel pox, a very close relative. And more importantly, are there really only two
locations on earth which still hold the smallpox virus?
Dr KEN ALIBEK
Former Head Scientist
Soviet Biological Warfare Programme
It's a very naïve assumption saying that we've got just two repositories of smallpox virus. There is some
known official stocks at least for example I can give you an example. We knew that even in late 80s North
Korea was experimenting with smallpox.
MANGOLD: So you are saying categorically there are illegal stocks, there must be illegal stocks of
smallpox at the very least in North Korea.
ALIBEK: I am saying categorically that in the beginning of 90s there were illegal stocks of smallpox in
North Korea.
MANGOLD: It may not be correct to mention it publicly but New York has been gearing itself for the
unlikely possibility of a smallpox attack, a prospect as remote as two hijacked airliners crashing into the
World Trade Centre.
GERRY HAUER
Office of Emergency Management
New York, 1996-2000
If in fact we had a contagious agent like smallpox, the ability of people to move would be significantly
restricted. You would not want contagious people moving out of the city to possibly infect other cities. So
I think you'd really have to clamp down very aggressively.
MANGOLD: I mean you would have to effectively isolate the city.
HAUER: I think that's right.
MANGOLD: Hauer's plans are brutal. The city would have to be isolated. No one could leave, no one
could enter. There would be substantial no go ghost areas. Governor's Island, just south of Wall Street,
Manhattan would become a mass mortuary, there would be lime pits. In the ensuing looting and panic,
martial law would be quickly and firmly imposed. Selected police have already been trained for this, as
have national guard units. Four years ago, Hauer trained 4000 New York first responders, police, fire and
ambulance, as well as 1500 doctors and nurses and 59 emergency hospitals, and it was just this preparation
that turned first responders into heroes after the one event no one could have predicted in their wildest
nightmares. The horror of September 11th tested New York's emergency management systems to the full
and showed how successfully the city could cope with crisis. Preparations for a biological attack suggest an
equally prescient response. That's the city of New York. What about the city of London? Whatever
London had in mind for dealing with a bio-terrorist attack before September 11th remains largely secret.
London never had a Gerry Hauer. The Department of Health has, however, been talking to the Americans
in the last two weeks to find out how they do things. Panorama decided to focus on one London borough
and the work of one emergency planning officer. David Kerry is responsible only for Hounslow, but he's
also Chairman of the London Emergency Planning Society. He looks after the fourth largest borough in
London.
KERRY: My role before an event happens is to work with all the emergency services, work with
colleagues throughout the council to make sure that we have plans that 24 hours a day enable us to support
the emergency services and look after people if there has been an emergency.
MANGOLD: Like most councils throughout Britain, Hounslow's emergency planning command centre is
on standby to deal with a disaster such as a plane crash. But detailed plans remain secret, even from those
who need to know.
DAVID KERRY
Chairman, London Emergency Planning Society
We don't know the full extent of the plans.
MANGOLD: Do you think that the Emergency Planning Officer for Hounslow ought to know what the
plans are?
KERRY: Given the current circumstances I would say yes.
MANGOLD: The Hounslow Emergency Control Centre is a bog standard planning room without any
specific equipment to deal with a biological attack, even though the risk is considered low. Any anthrax or
bacteria floating in the air would soon enter the centre through a cheap fan or through the windows,
ventilation is not safely pressurised.
KERRY: I'm not away of any local authority that has a pressurised or a low pressure emergency centre. So
that would be a problem for all local authorities if they were in the area that could be contaminated. The
hall behind the sports hall is where we would actually put the mattresses out for people to sleep.
MANGOLD: In the event of a successful biological attack, emergency plans require local authorities to
house medical staff, possibility overnight and local residents displaced from their homes.
KERRY: That'll hold 150 people altogether if we can find the mattresses for them.
MANGOLD: What about if the people are sick, or think they're sick, or are infected?
KERRY: Now that's the something that we haven't considered before. All of our plans in the past would
have been for people who are well, and people who are not well would be to hospital for the NHS. Under
these circumstances, I suppose we're looking at the possibility that people may present themselves as well,
but then over the course of a day or two start to exhibit signs of being ill, depending on what the
circumstances are. That isn't something we've planned for and sitting here at the moment I can't give you
the answer as to how we would deal with that.
MANGOLD: Kerry says there is a growing unease amongst his fellow emergency planning officers right
across the city. While there are plans to activate a national scheme from the emergency centre of the
cabinet office, and a system is in place to coordinate all the various government agencies, police and
military, he remains slightly unsure about plans at the local level.
KERRY: It's something that borough emergency planning officers have been talking a lot over the last few
weeks. Whenever we've met on the phone to each other we all share, I think, the same concern, that there
needs to be less secrecy about some of these contingency plans, and local authorities particularly, if we are
going to be able to make the proper response at the time, we need to have time to make sure our
contingency plans will adapt and will fit in.
MANGOLD: Last year the London Emergency Services combined to practice their response to a terrorist
attack using the chemical Saran. It was an extensive multi-agency exercise.
ROB DOBSON
Asst Commissioner, London Fire Brigade
The exercise took approximately 18 months to plan and prepare for, and that, once again, involved all the
people that would be involved in responding to the exercise and actually did take part on the day.
MANGOLD: It took its inspiration from a real attack in Tokyo five years earlier by a militant Japanese
terrorist group. Saran nerve gas was released in the Tokyo underground killing 12 people. But the trouble
with operation trump card was that it contained no biological dimension. The York Experience has shown
that it's a huge mistake to lump nuclear, chemical and biological defence together as each requires a wholly
different approach, so what was the value of trump card?
Did the operation have a biological at all?
DOBSON: No it didn't. It was purely a number of saran gas attacks across London.
MANGOLD: So in that sense I suppose it had no value in terms of biological terrorism.
DOBSON: No, I think it did. I think the thing that needs to be recognised is that from an emergency
service first responders point of view, there is very little difference to start with between a biological or a
chemical attack.
MANGOLD: The London Fire Service would have an important role in the event of a biological attack as
first responders charged with assessment and, if necessary, evacuation.
BRIAN ROBINSON
Commissioner, London Fire Brigade
We can mount an immediate and very effective attack on anything in London. The issue would become
staying within the vicinity of that for say more than 24 hours. And I think the scale of New York has raised
the question about resilience and that's what we're looking at currently. But that is not to say we cannot deal
with what's in front of us.
MANGOLD: Many of the New York lessons will have to be learnt quickly in White Hall, a place still
obsessed with secrecy, even when it comes to talking to its own. So what would happen if there were to be
a bio-terrorist attack in Britain? We've been unable to find out exactly how Britain's systems operate.
Some consultants, GPs and hospitals send reports to the Public Health Service Laboratories twice a week,
but not daily, as they do in New York. Last week David Kerry and other emergency planning officers
attended a special meeting of the Civil Contingency Secretariat which coordinates the Government response
to a bio-terrorist attack. The planning officers wanted a single point of contact for local authorities in the
event of a disaster and more openness about national plans. Kerry left unimpressed.
DAVID KERRY
Emergency Planning Officer, Hounslow
I could not say to the people of Hounslow today that we have got mass chemical or mass biological
terrorism covered. Nothing has changed since before I went into the meeting.
MANGOLD: Panorama did invite major government departments, including the Department of Health, the
Home Office and the Metropolitan Police to contribute to this edition. All declined to comment. The
Home Office says that there is no specific credible risk in the UK, that it does have contingency plans in
place, but it is impossible to discuss them openly as this would jeopardise them.
Gerry Hauer
Commissioner, Office of Emergency Management
New York, 1996-2000
I think that you need to balance between letting people know that you are prepared and not getting them
panicked, and I don't think that telling people that we have been working on preparedness and we can
respond to terrorist incidence. I don't think that's a bad thing.
MANGOLD: On September 11th the world learnt a terrible lesson. Now any disaster, no matter how
bizarre, becomes plausible, and that includes biological terrorism, however remote the possibility. Through
the awful success of their plans, the terrorists have warned the world to prepare for anything and everything
and they have forced us all to think the unthinkable. That is their ultimate legacy.
If you want to comment on tonight's programme you can contact our website at www.bbc.co.uk/panorama.
Next week, for the past year Panorama has had exclusive access to medicinal trials for cannabis. Might the
drug one day be available from the chemist?
_________
CREDITS
Reporter
Tom Mangold
Film Camera
Steve Foote
Sound Recordist
Alex Sullivan
Dubbing Mixer
Simon Price
VT Editor
Boyd Nagle
Graphic Design
Kaye Huddy
Julie Tritton
Original Music
Steve Isles
Production Team
Rosa Rudnicka
Ben Peachey
Kath Posner
Rebecca Maidens
Film Research
Kate Redman
Production Manager
Martha Estcourt
Unit Manager
Maria Ellis
Assistant Producers
Andy Blackman
Tamsen Courtnenay
Richard Grange
Florence Rossingnol
Rebecca Woodward
Associate Producer
Jeff Goldberg
Film Editor
Janet Taylor
Producer
Mike Smith
Deputy Editor
Andy Bell
Editor
Mike Robinson
14
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Transcribed by 1-Stop Express Services, London W2 1JG Tel: 020 77953 E-mail 1-stop@msn.com